White Rabbit(73)

Sebastian squirms a little bit, his hand tightening on mine. “Uh, actually, none of them really know yet? So I’m not sure how they’re gonna react. I can guess, maybe. I mean, there probably will be some self-shitting.”

My best friend processes this for a moment, and shifts her jaw a little. Setting down the chocolate shake, she wipes the moisture off her fingers and states expansively, “Well, if Rufus likes you, then you’re probably too good for them anyway. And as long as you keep him happy, you’re welcome to hang out with us.”

“We can’t play sportsball,” Brent admits with effort, visibly putting aside his instinctive distrust of the athlete in our midst, “but between the three of us, we could probably recite every line of Scott Pilgrim for you.”

“And if you don’t keep Rufus happy,” Lucy continues, twirling a butter knife rapidly around in her fingers like one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, “I will be selling your organs off on Craigslist. Just so you know.”

“Duly noted.” Sebastian straightens up a bit, eyebrows in a high arch. “Now, when you say ‘Scott Pilgrim’ … are you talking the movie, or the graphic novels?”

“Um, are you freaking kidding?” Brent practically squeals. “The graphic novels, bruh, they’re epic. I mean, how could they leave the ‘stark, existential horror of Honest Ed’s’ out of the movie? Bryan Lee O’Malley is a damn genius!” In a stagey voice, he quotes, “‘I need some kind of, like, last minute, poorly-set-up deus ex machina!’”

Slapping her palms down on the table, Lucy chimes in gleefully, “‘I had sexual relations with your mother! Your mother was not that good in bed!’”

“‘Let’s be friends based on mutual hate,’” I submit—a personal favorite.

“‘You listen to me,’” Sebastian fires back, beaming. “‘I’m the one who tells you what your mom says, okay?’”

The four of us giggle stupidly for a moment, and then Lucy snatches up her milkshake again. “Okay, I guess he’s all right.”

At that moment, a waitress sidles up to our table, her reddish-blond hair tied back in a collapsing knot of thick curls. Of all people, it’s Ramona fucking Waverley. “If you guys don’t keep it down, you’re gonna wake the other customers.”

With a sardonic expression, she gestures to an old man who has passed out, face-first, in a plate of toast at a nearby table. Contritely, Lucy offers, “Sorry, Ramona. We promise to use our Inside Voices.”

“Puh-lease don’t!” Ramona casts a greedy, conspiratorial smile around the table, silently claiming membership in our disjointed clique without waiting for permission. It’s her signature move: skipping all the History and Trust Building stages of friendship and going straight to Familiar Intimacy. With a flourish, she produces a check and places it facedown between Lucy and Brent. “There you go, guys. Pay that when you’re ready, but take your time—you’re the most exciting thing that’s happened in here for hours, and I’m still on till six. Graveyard shift sucks, am I right?”

“’Specially if you’re a vampire,” Lucy replies cheerily, shoveling up some of her shake with a long-handled spoon.

“Hey, Bash.” Ramona’s eyes glitter like a hungry raccoon’s as she turns them on my boyfriend. I swear she even licks her chops a little. “Guess there’s a whole lot of drama going down tonight, huh?”

“You’re talking about Race and Peyton,” Sebastian hazards in a neutral tone. It’s a thin line he’s started walking, here; Ramona, like all gossips, treats information as power—and an uneven exchange of it will not be in her best interests. If we ask her flat out what she knows, she’ll shut down faster than my crappy laptop every time I get to the—ahem—good part of an adult-type movie clip online.

“It must be really tough on your group, huh?” Ramona goads with overbaked sympathy. “Like, everybody taking sides and whatever?” Misinterpreting Sebastian’s hesitation to answer, she sighs. “All right, I get it: You don’t want to blab. At least just say if they’re officially broken up or not. You can tell me that.”

“Uh…” Sebastian, it turns out, is total crap at the gossip game. “How much do you know about it?”

I almost groan out loud as, predictably, Ramona’s eyes narrow. “How much is there to know?”

This vaudeville routine could go on all night, I realize, so I head it off at the pass with an abrupt announcement. “Fox Whitney is dead.”

Ramona, Lucy, and Brent all react in unison. “What?”

“It’s a really long story,” I say, with a look to my best friend, “but that’s what was up with April tonight. We had to take her to the police so she could make a statement. They just sent her home a little while ago.”

“A statement?” Ramona grabs a free chair from another table, dragging it noisily across the floor, and plops down next to Brent. “So, when you say he’s dead, what you mean is…?”

It’s a leading question, and I shake my head. “You first—what have you heard about Race and Peyton?”

“Okay, okay!” Her curiosity is too piqued to hold out. “It’s not what I heard; it’s what I saw.” She leans forward and we all mimic the move unconsciously, like a bunch of spies in a made-for-TV movie. “So, it was early on, like, not long after my shift started. You know—when everybody else was out partying?” There’s a faint rebuke in her tone, which we all choose to ignore. “Anyway, I’d only been on for like an hour or so, when guess who stomps right through that door, alone, and orders an herbal tea?” She scans our faces, waits a beat, and then announces, “Peyton.”